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 »HILLTOP COMMUNITY RESOURCES
Sabrina Meade works full-time in a nursing home caring for patients afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease and severe dementia. As a Certified Nursing Assistant, she offers her patients comfort and stability. "It's a rewarding job," said Meade, 24, who lives in Clifton. "You become their family." Yet when she needed health care herself, she found that her hourly salary of $10.50 didn't stretch far enough to afford health insurance. Pregnant with her first child in 2007, Meade worried about how she and her husband would pay $20,000 out-of-pocket for the baby's birth. Then, she found out about Hilltop Community Resources in Grand Junction. Hilltop's Child & Family Center helped Meade qualify for CHP+, which provided health coverage during her pregnancy. She loved being able to pick her own doctor and knowing that her baby would have access to medical care after the birth. Little Vada Schuman, now 13 months old, arrived nearly two weeks late. "I ended up needing an emergency C-section," Meade said. "Thankfully, she came out a very healthy baby." The nonprofit agency helped Meade's husband, too. Jason Schuman, 32, used to work on the oil rigs across western Colorado. But tumbling oil prices and the declining economy have drastically reduced the number of jobs in the oil and gas industry. Hilltop's Workforce Center helped Schuman get retrained as a nursing assistant. Now he works day shifts at the same Palisade nursing home where his wife works in the evening. They take turns caring for their daughter.
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